Day 1,101

for Shaimaa Hussein

How can your brother be living
and dead at the same time?
Felled in a bombing, his pulse
stopped. They declared him
dead. Then, uncannily, a finger
started moving. It moved again.
The doctors revived him. Your mother
stood over him, weeping and talking,
crooning to him as she did
when he was a baby: he was
her baby, coming back
to life. Life? Five months
in hospitals. Surgeries.
Recoveries. Now
he’s home, walking
and eating. But is he
alive? All day he sits,
doesn’t leave the house,
doesn’t want to think
about football, studying, friends.
His life has become
a standstill, a stopped clock. An
empty bowl waiting to be filled.
A blank parenthesis
between a past he can name
and an unnamable future.